Inner as Outer: Projecting Mental States as External Reality.

Introduction to Mysticism

Within Mysticism, the merging of Self and World — Inner and Outer — is seen as the utmost aim. Mysticism can be found within most of the world religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam — and its aim is often formulated as union with God. Depending on the religion, however, the degree to which Mysticism is the common way of practicing the religion varies. Although many religions have such contemplative practices, they are not always adopted by the religion’s followers at large.

When discussing «Union with God», it should be noted that the term «God» varies in its meaning between these religions. The contemplative practices often have significantly varying metaphysics, for instance Monotheistic (Christianity), Polytheistic (Hinduism), and relatively Atheistic or Agnostic (Buddhism). Be this as it may, their descriptions of the experience of this merging of Self and God is often strikingly similar. These states of enlightenment are often described as ecstatic, in which the conscious experience can not be placed within our normal frames of language or understanding.

What also unites the different traditions, is that such states of consciousness is usually worked towards through contemplative practice such as yoga, meditation or other disciplines of focus or conscious attention. Other techniques for achieving these ecstasies have have been ascetic ones, such as fasting, waking, isolation — or other ways of stirring the Self to war.

The experience of seeing the Inner as Outer, and the Outer as Inner, is often described as the feeling that living itself is an experience of seeing and perceiving Oneself and/or God. Within this worldview, there is no Self relating to anything external.

Non-duality: synchronization of Inner & Outer

The concept of merging Inner and Outer, or Self and God, can each be viewed either in very material or spiritual terms. Although materiality and spirituality do not have to differ metaphysically, separating these gives us some communicative benefits — and Mysticism may be explained and spoken of from both these perspectives. Discussing the Inner as Outer purely «scientifically», if you will, makes sense in that all our perceptions of the Outer world is indeed created Inner, and as such — Reality will always be a synergy of Inner and Outer. We know that we do not see, or have ever seen, anything which we ourselves do not actively generate. As neuroscientist and consciousness researcher Anil Seth put it, “our brains are actively hallunicating our conscious reality”.

States where a subject experiences the Inner and Outer as ‘one’, is often referred to as «non-dual». Often while speaking of Inner and Outer, we tend to implicitly reinforce the Self and the World as a duality (when pitching a solution we often have to pitch the problem first). By using the word «non-dual» instead of ‘one’, we may pinpoint the nuance that it is not a duality in separation, but neithercompletely “same-same”. Although it is non-dual, neither is it all same or flat — least of all static!

Although we classify and divide our reality, fundamentally what we perceive is a stream of experience, which in every sense is simply “reality” before divided, and, again, actively created by us. This is not to say that there are no external reality or world — but it definitely is to say that all which is external is perceived first and foremost, solely, internally. Experientially — externality has never been perceived, except as a subcomponent of internality.

A vase, or two faces? Each defines the other, and neither exist without the other.

Experiencing and Sensing the Non-Dual

This causal explanation, however, leaves out the experiential aspects of the non-duality. Although it may make sense on paper, it matters little to us as we absolutely perceive the world as dual — as subjects relating to a World. Within Philosophy, this traditional way of adhering to and speaking of the world, is referred to as the subject-object dichotomy. Although, between different cultures and continents, the degree to which we adhere to this way of thinking vary in its intensity, it is nevertheless definitely an essential part of the human experience which we share.

How the material explanation can be said to be different from the spiritual in this sense, is that the spiritual concern is to experience the Inner as Outer, not to understand it cognitively. As such, and towards that, meditation practices such as Mindfulness and Yoga have existed, to increase wellbeing by increasing the degree to which one feels in union with God, or for those who do not fancy the term; to the degree which one has peace with oneself and the world.

Contemplative practices such as yoga and meditation, has the last fifty years become more popular in western societies. Although they have been subject to a certain degree of metaphysical raffination the last years, these methods are nevertheless largely old and traditional. The most common of these contemplative practices we see today is adopted from the Vippassana practice, commonly known as Mindfulness. These methods are now commonly used in psychological treatment of anxiety and depression, and research has the latest years started to uncover the benefits of learning to be able to sit quietly with your mind and, well, deal with shit, or seeing it for what it is.

In the next section, we will discuss an approach utilizing Virtual Reality to aid in Mindfulness meditation — which can help to perceive the Inner as Outer.

A common belief is that the aim of contemplative practices is to empty the mind. In a sense, it can be said to be correct, in that meditation practices often seek to eradicate, dilute or cancel the self-referential narratives.

The effects of Mindfulness meditation

The essence of Mindfulness or similar contemplative practices, lie in their manipulation of identity. We stated “the problem” of Mysticism as the gap between Self and Other — and for this separation to be there, we must necessarily have a relatively thoroughly defined sense of self. For most of us, this tend to be limited to the cognitive processes that constitute our mental narrative (the personalized voice in our heads, our formulated will, and how it appears to direct our actions and plans our lives). It is actually to a far lesser extent our bodies, although this also attributes to our self-consciousness.

Mindfulness is about being present attentively in each moment to one’s state of mind. When doing such focus excercises directed at the mind, and observing these mental processes closely, the idea or view of them as solid things starts to unravel. When rather seeing them as thoughts from a distance, they appear untangled to us, and we perceive our own existence as distinct from those thoughts.

Virtual Reality Biofeedback as Meditation aid

One of the great benefits of VR is its ability to project and represent data in the format of the reality encompassing us. Within the context of this entry, we could say therefore that VR can simulate what we perceive as the Outer. The question may then be asked: how can we project our Inner in to this medium of Outer?

Although I believe we will see more work on VR biofeedback within this domain in the future, in this entry we will focus only on one research paper in particular to examplify our case. At last years CHI conference, the world leading conference on Human Computer Interaction, Joan Sol Roo and his colleagues presented their work on Inner Garden: a mixed reality sandbox for mindfulness. The artifact is a physical sandbox, which the user can shape to a given terrain. The sandbox is given generally visually augmented by a projector with colors and shapes — and physical changes to the sandbox will also alter the output of the projector, which deliver terrain information such as sea levels and green growth.

The sandbox is just not physical, however; by placing a physical avatar in the physical sandbox, you can enter into the land you created in Immersive VR. A 3D-model of the land you created physically can be seen virtually, from the viewpoint of your placed avatar.

The Sandbox, which heights of the sand have been turned into an island by the projector.

Attached, to measure your inner states, is both breathing- and heart rate sensors — which are coupled to provide visual and auditive feedback. In this way, you can synchronize your breath to control the environment and rythm and breaking of the waves. The Inner Garden represents your inner state, and. by practicising breathing techniques, the flora of your world will get greener and more animals will appear.

In this way, Inner Garden works as a great example of representing Inner phenomena as External Reality. Very conceptually interesting, and hopefully one day we will also see empirical studies on similar artifacts.

You can read more about Inner Garden, which received an honorable mention at CHI’17, here.

What do you think? Do you have any ideas for VR applications using biofeedback? Please comment below.

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